Sierra Leone: The State of Security and Governance

Since the successful elections on 14 May 2003, the donor community and the people of Sierra Leone have grown increasingly frustrated with stagnating reform and recovery, says this new briefing from the International Crisis Group. UNAMSIL is due to depart by December 2004 but the police and military are still fragile, so it would be wise to have contingency plans. The situation in neighbouring Liberia also remains a security risk. There is no systematic plan of decentralisation, and local elections scheduled to take place by the end of the year are likely to be postponed. Efforts to address rampant corruption have proved fruitless and Sierra Leone’s diamond mines remain poorly monitored with illegal mining and smuggling still estimated to produce hundreds of millions of dollars that are unaccounted for and unavailable to help rebuild the economy.